Eight Crazy Nights
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 This movie is meant to represent the great aspects of Hanukkah, but Jewish people will feel even more unclean after watching this.
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Eight Crazy Nights is a 2002 American adult animated musical Christmas black comedy-drama film directed by Seth Kearsley and produced, co-written by, and starring Adam Sandler, in his first voice acting role.
Released on November 27, 2002, it was Happy Madison Productions' only animated film they had ever made, until Netflix's Leo in 2023. Eight Crazy Nights was also actually one of Adam Sandler's first box office bombs, as it only grossed $23.8 million out of its $34 million budget and is usually seen as one of Adam Sandler's worst films.
Plot
Davey Stone, a 33-year-old party animal, finds himself in trouble with the law after his wild ways go too far. In keeping with the holiday spirit, the judge gives Davey one last chance at redemption to spend the holiday preforming community service as the assistant referee for the youth basketball league of go to jail. Davey thinks he’s gotten off easy until he meets Whitey Duvall, the eccentric, elf-like head referee.
Why All Eight Nights Have Gone Wrong
- Poor and annoying voice acting, with some exceptions. The voice of Whitey was supposed to be funny, but instead, people found it to be annoying and ear-grating. Worst of all, Adam Sandler himself voices the man.
- Davey is a very unlikable protagonist and, to add insult to injury, he has a tragic backstory that not only sounds way too dark and emotional to be in a comedy film, but it’s also offensive to those who lost their parent(s). His parents were killed in a car accident on Hanukkah night on their way to his basketball game when he was a young boy and was so distraught upon finding out that he became the notorious criminal that he was and became cruel towards society.
- He is nothing but a delinquent like when he doesn't pay his scorpion bowl and steals someone's snowmobile while using his nun-chucks to destroy every snowman.
- On the subject of Davey, he's mean-spirited, unfriendly, arrogant, hate-filled, and mentally disturbed. He is also a grouchy jerk who is almost as heinous as Gord from Freddy Got Fingered. While he does become a better person in the end, he never apologized for all the previously heinous and horrible actions he did to the town (though at least he apologized to Whitey), making his character development feel shallow and more unforgivable then ever; though to be fair, a simple apology would be shallow in itself.
- Speaking of his backstory, The Nostalgia Critic even points out that even after the backstory of Davey's parents dying, they still make him too unlikable for us to sympathize with him.
- While the animation is good (and it helps that several of the film's animators also worked on the cult classic animated film The Iron Giant), it just doesn't fit the film's tone at all. Plus, it gets vile and ugly on the inside.
- Adding to the point above, having the movie animated is somewhat pointless and it would have had the same budget (if not a lower one) if it was in live-action instead.
- Excessive use of juvenile toilet humor (e.g. Davey belching and reindeer pooping while laughing at a nonsensical joke and having poop on their teeth).
- The film is too short, running only 71 minutes. The scenes go too quickly and don’t spend enough time on character development.
- It has musical numbers that show no charm to Christmas or Hanukkah, or any song that isn't Christmas themed at all.
- Several of the musical numbers have characters singing very badly and they can be off-key. Whitey is the most glaring example with his "technical foul" song.
- Shameless Product Placement: There are scenes that have excessive use of blatant product placement (e.g. Footlocker, Sharper Image, Radio Shack, Dunkin' Donuts, etc.) done in a way that is wasted on such a dreadful movie, especially when they get to have a bizarre scene where they begin to sing to Davey (which feels just as painfully stupid and bizarre as a musical number from Tentacolino, and it even feels like a segment from that movie).
- Poor attempts at humor that makes fun of minorities, such as the elderly and fat people in the worst way possible. Even Davey is made to be like this because (as mentioned before) he is nothing but an unapologetic, mean-spirited, hateful person throughout the entire film.
- Instances of poorly written dialogue (e.g. "Smell ya later, Poopsicle!" and "I should stick you on a twig and roast you!")
- The joke about the fat kid's chest is rather creepy and pedophilic.
- A scene at the end in which Whitey is having a seizure, then stating that it's "the happiest seizure of his life" is very offensive and insulting to those who that had seizures.
- Rob Schneider plays an offensive Chinese stereotype, though it could be forgiven since he is partially from an Asian descent.
- Misleading Title: Despite being called Eight Crazy Nights, it’s barely a Hanukkah movie!
- Due to negative reception, it made Sandler not do anymore voice acting in animated films until Hotel Transylvania in 2012.
- Overall, the movie is a poor way to celebrate Christmas and/or Hanukkah as it feels like an insult to those holidays.
Redeeming Qualities
- Good music:
- The Intervention Song leads to a pretty good emotional moment.
- The Chanukah Song that was used at the end was good.
- As mentioned earlier, the animation is really good (for the most part) and even if it doesn't perfectly match the film's tone, it’s much better if you watch the movie on mute.
- Whitey can be considered likable if you can get past his merely obnoxious voice since he’s such a nice and selfless person. Alternatively, they may find his voice to be legitimately funny.
- His voice was originally even louder and more annoying during the production of this film, but the voice that you hear in the final release was lowered down by the focus group.
- The rest of the voice acting is good, except for Adam Sandler as Whitey and Rob Schneider as the Chinese Waiter.
- Speaking of Schneider, he did a good job narrating the film.
- Like many of the "Christmas hater" characters such as The Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge, Davey does reform to be a better person in the end.
- Plus, the idea of a criminal who was secretly once a good kid until his life spiraled out of control due to a personal tragedy is interesting, but sadly, it's badly handled and wasted.
Trivia
- It was Adam Sandler's first attempt at making a traditionally animated film, despite the film being a failure critically and commercially. Not only that, but this was his first voice-acting role before voicing Dracula in the first three Hotel Translyvania films (before the fourth and final was replaced by Brian Hull) and Netflix's 2023 film Leo.
- Director Seth Kearsley gave the Nostalgia Critic a thank you Tweet to him for reviewing the film and sent a long e-mail describing all the hard work that he and all the cast and animation crew went through. He also admitted that he hated the poop-eating reindeer scene and wanted to cut it out, but was forced to leave it in the film due to the positive reaction from the test audiences.
- Whitey Duvall originated from a 1999 audio sketch by Adam Sandler providing his voice. He made his live-action debut in Little Nicky, played by Dana Carvey before Sandler returned to voice Whitey in this movie.
- The main poster recently became a meme in 2023 on the internet parodying certain stuff.
Reception
Eight Crazy Nights received largely negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 13% of 109 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average score is 3.1/10. The sites critical consensus reads: "Sandler returns to his roots in the nauseating concoction filled with potty humor and product placements.".
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Categories:
- 2000s films
- Comedy films
- Drama films
- Animated films
- Happy Madison films
- Box office bombs
- Christmas films
- Sony films
- Columbia Pictures
- Films with misleading posters
- Gross-out films
- Musical films
- Cult films
- Movies with obvious product placement
- Annoying films
- Films with misleading titles
- Aware of how bad they are
- Mean-spirited films
- Films
- Holiday films
- Internet memes
- Black comedy films
- Racist films
- Offensive films
- Adult animated films
- Creator regrets
- Unfunny films